Cyclic bond deterioration of deformed steel bar in well-confined concrete

The cyclic bond deterioration mechanism of deformed steel bars embedded in concrete is critical for establishing the hysteretic bond stress-slip relationship. For a deformed steel bar, well-confined in concrete, the bond failure model under monotonic loading is governed by pullout, the bond deterioration trend under cyclic loading is remains unclear, especially in the case of applied lateral pressure. In this paper, the effect of uniaxial lateral pressure on the bond performance under different loading histories was studied. The test results indicate that the variation in bond parameters under varied lateral pressure is negligible. Therefore, the monotonic and reversed bond stress-slip constitutive relationship of a deformed bar failed by pullout, without lateral pressure confinement, can be used for simulating the bond response under different uniaxial lateral pressures. Cubic concrete specimens with small openings were used to quantitatively analyze the failure process under reversed loading through digital imaging correlation (DIC). The bond stress was observed to be nearly uniformly distributed along the interface at the initial loading stage. After increasing the pull-out or push-in loading to 75 %–85 % of the peak bond strength, we observed minute shear cracks between the interfaces. Subsequently, the length and width of the cracks were then gradually developed with the controlling slip and number of cycles, leading to reduced mechanical interaction and friction between the shear cracks.